Hardware friendly virtual frame buffer
AssigneeSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
InventorsAriel Orfaig, Nathan Henri Levy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Embodiments of a virtual frame buffer (VFB) for buffering asynchronous data originating from an imaging source such as a dynamic vision sensor. The VFB may include a hash table memory, a data memory, and a control unit. The control unit receives an input address of an asynchronous data event and determines a pseudo-randomly computed hash of the hash table memory at which to store the input address. The control unit links the hash to a handle corresponding to a data memory cell that stores pixel data of the event. The VFB may interface like a full frame buffer, but use significantly less memory. The VFB may be used with a pixel processing algorithm to search for recent events in a localized environment of a pixel.
Claims20
A virtual frame buffer comprising:
- a hash table memory;
- a data memory;
- and
- control circuitry configured to:
- receive an input address of an asynchronous image data event;
- determine a pseudo-randomly computed hash of the hash table memory at which to store the input address;
- and
- link the hash to a handle of the data memory where data of the image data event is stored.
An image processing system comprising:
- a dynamic vision sensor (DVS) configured to output asynchronous data events;
- a virtual frame buffer;
- and
- a processing and storage system;
- wherein the virtual frame buffer comprises:
- a hash table memory;
- a data memory;
- and control circuitry configured to receive an input address of an asynchronous image data event of the DVS, determine a pseudo-randomly computed hash of the hash table memory at which to store the input address, based on a hash function;
- and link the hash to a handle of the data memory where data of the image data event is stored;
- and
- wherein the processing and storage system is configured to execute a pixel processing program that sends a recent event search command, corresponding to a pixel address, to the virtual frame buffer to search for a recent event at that pixel address, and the virtual frame buffer responds with a recent event search result obtained by searching hashes of the hash table for the pixel address using the hash function, and outputting image data from the data memory corresponding to the pixel address if found in the searched hashes.
A frame buffering method comprising:
- receiving an input address of an asynchronous data event corresponding to an image collection cell of an image sensor;
- determining a pseudo-randomly computed hash of a hash table memory at which to store the input address;
- storing at least image data of the asynchronous data event at a data memory cell defined by a handle;
- and
- linking the hash stored in the hash table memory to the handle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.